Happy Thanksgiving

Shout triumphantly to the LORD,
all the earth.
Serve the LORD with gladness;
come before Him with joyful songs.
Acknowledge that the LORD is God.
He made us, and we are His –
His people, the sheep of His pasture.
Enter His gates with thanksgiving
and His courts with praise.
Give thanks to Him and praise His name.
For the LORD is good, and His love is eternal;
His faithfulness endures to all generations.

Psalm 100

These two polar bears walk into a Japanese zoo...

Zoo solves mystery of celibate polar bears

Puzzled zookeepers in northern Japan have discovered the reason why their attempts to mate two polar bears kept failing: Both are female.

Top ten responses from the zoo officials:

1) Not that there's anything wrong with that.

2) Well, the water is really cold.

3) Do we have any bi-polar bears?

4) It worked at the San Francisco Zoo.

5) Our DVM is an Aggie.

6) Maybe if we give her a crewcut ...

7) Think it would work better with two males?

8) Icicles

9) Don't Ask, Don't Tell

10) They're polar bears, would YOU want to check?

Jesus Practices Affirmative Action

By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Hebrew, which has five colonnades. Within these lay a multitude of the sick – blind, lame, and paralyzed [-- waiting for the moving of the water, because an angel would go down into the pool from time to time and stir up the water. Then the first one who got in after the water was stirred up recovered from whatever ailment he had.] One man was there who had been sick for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew he had already been there a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to get well?”

“Sir,” the sick man answered, “I don’t have a man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.”

“Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your bedroll and walk!” Instantly the man got well, picked up his bedroll, and started to walk. – John 5:2-9

The bracketed part about the angel is missing from some manuscripts. Whether John wrote it or it was added as a commentary doesn’t matter, for we can see that those sick people who lay in the porches around about the pool were there waiting for something to happen. According to the text that is in all the manuscript versions, the man explains to Jesus that someone always got into the water ahead of him, thereby denying him the opportunity for healing.

“Do you want to get well?”

The wisdom of Jesus is such that He does not simply assume a sick man wants to be healed. I wonder what I would say if Jesus walked up to me and asked, “Do you want to be whole? Do you want Me to break that chain? Do you want to be free of that habit? Do you want liberty? Do you want peace?”

God is not going to push His favor upon us if we prefer something else. If I want ugly ersatz instead of the genuine for the same price, He will not snatch the imitation from me and force me to embrace the real and the beautiful. Some of us seem to like being victims. After all, we can’t all be here to “help others” – some of us have to make the sacrifice and be helped. Children will sometimes have a problem that gets them more attention and special treatment. Why get rid of it? Adults often do the same thing in relationships. Some groups take advantage of their special victim status on a national scale.

This man’s answer to Jesus’ question tells us about expectations, “I don’t have anybody to help me. Somebody else always gets there first.” There are many who think because they don’t have the “advantages” they cannot overcome their difficulties and circumstances. Jesus says this is not true. To overcome I do not need someone else to help me – I need to respond to Jesus.

If you read on in this passage you will find that Jesus commanded this man to get up, pick up his bed and walk on the Sabbath. The healed man was then confronted by the religious authorities, and, when asked who had told him to “work” on the Sabbath, he admitted he did not know. In fact, only later was the man able to positively identify the Man who had healed him as Jesus.

If you’ve ever heard Christians who believe in healing talk about it, you will hear a lot about faith, and seeking and fervent prayer. This man had no faith in Christ; he had no idea who He was. The sick man was not seeking God – he was hanging around in the shade waiting for another person to help him get into the water. I suppose you could say he was seeking a healing and had some faith in the miraculous nature of the pool, but it was not necessarily a belief that looked to God.

I have never understood why Jesus picked this man out and healed him. Neither have I ever understood how this person who comes off as rather indolent and dismissive of God received a healing.

The man is questioned by the authorities, says he doesn’t know who told him to get up and walk, then look what happens:

After this, Jesus found him in the temple complex and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin any more, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.” The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

Can you believe that? He had to know that this would cause Jesus trouble. I don’t like this guy. I never have. He wallows in his victim status. He whines that he doesn’t get any help. He is miraculously healed without really any effort on his part, and then he rats out the Healer. What an ingrate!

As far as I can remember this is the only time the Gospels report Jesus seeking someone out after the fact and telling them to be avoid sinning, and tied sin to physical disease in just this way. He did tell the woman taken in adultery in John 8 to “go and sin no more”, but the circumstances were vastly different.

Like this man beside the pool, people hear God’s voice all the time. They benefit from responding, but they have no idea who is talking to them. People are directed by God, blessed by God, and even do God’s work without ever realizing the Source of their inspiration. For His part, as Jesus demonstrates here, God is no respecter of persons. He is good to everyone, even those who do not know Him.

The man at the pool of Bethesda did not even give a straight answer about wanting to be healed. The only thing he did right was stand up. When he heard Jesus tell him to get up, he got up. He obeyed.

Sometimes, that’s all it takes.

Bathroom Break

Space Station Urine Recycler Passes Key Test

That's the headline from space.com. All I can say is, "Ouch."

Put the Load Right on Me

Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light. – Matthew 11:28-30

I want to say that is my favorite verse in the Bible, but I’ll probably say that about another passage sooner or later, so it seems kind of silly. It is a comforting statement. It is a distillation of the mission of Christ.

Imagine living before Christ. Whether you lived under the demanding but clear constraints of the Law as the Hebrews, or under the capriciousness of the pagan gods as the Greeks, what would it have meant to hear someone say, “Come and rest your soul.” This rest is what we all seek. Atheists seek rest for the soul. They do it by denying the soul, by saying that what we call “soul” is some sort of brain-body gestalt, a sort of simulacrum, perhaps, but still and all an illusion is still an illusion even if it is useful. Their rest is the rest of the paralytic, if not the rotting corpse, an illusion of rest for the illusion of their soul.

I think we notice it more during this season of the year, when we are harried by the hounds of the holidays. We need this promise. Rest for the soul means deliverance from fear, the meeting of every need, and the fulfillment of every desire. The promise Jesus makes is immediate, “Come to Me ... I will give you rest.” He offers those who would trust in Him relief right now, release like the flipping of a switch. In a moment, the believer can go from restless to resting.

There is another aspect that is delayed. “Take My yoke … learn from Me … you will find rest.” In the Gospels we are told of those like the woman with the issue of blood who merely touched Jesus and were instantly healed. Yet there were others who followed Him every day, abiding with Him, sharing His life, and learning from Him. Jesus gave those who touched Him rest; those who followed Him found rest.

He calls us to receive from Him immediate rest, but He also calls us to be His disciples. He calls us to wear a yoke and bear a burden, to work. Yet in that we find an abiding rest that will not depart.

The difference between working for the man and working for the Man is in the yoke and the burden. For man, everything is one-size-fits-all, and you are on your own, baby. With Jesus the yoke is tailor-made, perfectly fitted, just your size, and, if you look to your right, you will see that you have a partner. Yes, you still have a burden to bear, but it, too, is perfectly sized for your frame. A well-fitted harness and an appropriate load are not hard to bear. I think, in fact, we need a burden.

I see the Amish going along the roadsides. Most of the time the horses have their heads up and seem to be enjoying the trip themselves. A hound on the trail, no matter how hard the run or elusive the quarry, is a happy hound. The hound is not content in the pen. A horse is not content in the pasture. A man is not content without a burden, a purpose, a reason for being here.

Rest comes first from the yoke. Put a poor-quality, ill-adjusted pack frame on and you will suffer carrying ten pounds. With a good pack, well-adjusted, I might carry five or even ten times that and not suffer as much. God knows not only what we can bear, but how best for us to bear it.

Next we learn from Jesus. This is not a singletree, it is a doubletree, and on the other side, helping us pull the load is Christ Himself. He says, “Learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart.” Team the wise horse with the one you want to break to the harness – let the knowing one gently instruct the inexperienced not to fight the yoke, not to get too far ahead, not to overreach, but settle in to the pull, be steady and patient. To learn from Jesus, we need to abide in Him. Partake of His nature. He’s not going to push us too hard. He’s not standing behind us with a whip. He’s right here beside us. Our difficulty and pain come from our own failure to emulate Him, to be also gentle and humble in spirit.

It requires a certain amount of surrender – no, that’s wrong. It requires a full surrender. Surrendering some of my life to Christ is worse than surrendering none.

My granddaughter has become a fan of rollercoasters. I ride them with her because her grandma just can’t handle it. The first thing you learn about a rollercoaster is that you are not in control. You can’t stop it, and you can’t get off. The next thing you learn is that as long as you stay where you are until the end, you will be fine. Sure, you may puke up a corndog, but it’s not fatal. Just hang on and enjoy the ride. In other words, surrender.

Probably no one else is stupid enough to have tried this, but I know from painful personal experience what it is like to do some things my way. Not that I was ever an especially agreeable person, but struggling to run things myself makes me even more irritable and unpleasant than normal. I am mean, ugly and in a rage – all the while claiming to be a Christian. It is not a pretty sight.

Far better to trust God completely, to be – not indifferent, but accepting. That’s an important distinction. God does not want me to say, “I don’t care.” He wants me to say, “Thy will be done,” and to believe that it will. God forgive me for the hours I spent trying to change His mind and get Him to say, “Your will be done.”

No, prayer is to lay out my situation before the Lord and say to Him, You do what’s best. This is my prayer of rest:

Lord, this is what I’d like to see happen, but, I’ll happily (honest, Lord, happily) accept what You do. And now that I have prayed, I am confident that what comes to me will be, indeed, Your will. So that’s cool.

I don’t think you have to add “in Jesus’s name” because I’m fairly sure if you can pray like that with sincerity and a straight face, it is in His name. You can leave the “amen” to Him as well.

Perfect Love Casts Out Fear (but it scares you to death in the process)

Nothing is inexorable but love. Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor. Nor is it then the love that yields, but its alloy. For if at the voice of entreaty love conquers displeasure, it is love asserting itself, not love yielding its claims. It is not love that grants a boon unwillingly; still less is it love that answers a prayer to the wrong and hurt of him who prays. Love is one, and love is changeless.

For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more. It strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected – not in itself, but in the object. As it was love that first created humanity, so even human love, in proportion to its divinity, will go on creating the beautiful for its own outpouring. There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved, and love is ever climbing toward the culmination when such shall be the universe, imperishable, divine.

Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed.

And our God is a consuming fire.

If this is hard to understand, it is as the simple, absolute truth is hard to understand. It may be centuries of ages before a man comes to see a truth – ages of strife, of effort, of aspiration. But when once he does see it, it is so plain that he wonders how he could have lived without seeing it. That he did not understand it sooner was simply and only that he did not see it. To see a truth, to know what it is, to understand it, and to love it, are all one. – George MacDonald, excerpt from sermon, “The Consuming Fire”

I’m a little short on time for the next few days, so, like yesterday, I may not be blogging much.

A short description of MacDonald might be to say he was a person who had rejected Calvinistic determinism but clung to the beautiful truth of God’s sovereignty. Here he is depicting the Lord as that perfect Bridegroom, likewise described in Ephesians 5:27, as presenting his Bride “to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, holy and blameless.”

God will never give up on us, but that also means He will never really let up on us. In the end we will get right. Can something be absolutely terrifying and joyously hopeful at the same time?

Well, there was this Cross …

In Search of Martyrdom

He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” – Acts 1:7,8

A witness is a martyr, or it might be better to say that our word martyr meant witness. This is just a guess on my part, but I doubt that there is a similar word in the Islamic lexicon. The West has adapted martyr to fit the perversion that is suicide/homicide bombing, but such actions could only in the most inverted sense have anything to do with the word as Jesus used it.

The association between being a martyr and dying came about because of the persecution of the early Church. It was necessary as a part of being a witness for Christ to endure suffering, imprisonment, torture and even death. Frankly I find it offensive, not just to myself, but to God, to call some half-wit who blows himself up in order to kill innocent little children a martyr. He is a murderer. If he is “witnessing” for his god, then his god is a murderous and despicable entity. In fact I would equate such a god with “the god of this world” of whom Jesus warns us.

Let me hasten to add that not all of Islam holds to such a belief any more than all Christians are like Jim Jones. The terrorist thugs of Syria, Palestine, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are likely as much an offense to the decent Muslims – Sufis and others – as they are to me.

Jesus said that the believer will be clothed and infused with a spiritual power, like plugging a light into an electrical outlet. It is this power than enables me to be a martyr – if I might be allowed to reclaim a valuable mot. This goes beyond any kind of formal or traditional “testimony”, beyond preaching or public displays. To be a martyr in the sense Christ intended is to illuminate my own soul and the spiritual environment wherein I live and move and have my being.

To be a martyr is to bring God into contact with the world.

I don’t get extra credit for this. I don’t get special privileges in heaven, or a heavenly maid who looks like Ava Gardner. It does not involve going out and provoking persecutory responses from the heathen. Being a witness does not necessarily mean that I hand out tracts in the promenade or pester passers-by by singing into a bullhorn. I don’t have to annoyingly knock doors on Saturday mornings.

A martyr’s calling is to live. “The one who believes in Me,” Jesus told those at the graveside of Lazarus, “even if he dies, will live.” The zombies and the vampires won’t like him, and may well make his life tough, attempt to kill him, or even think they have killed him. Nevertheless, he lives.

The martyr’s reward is life – real life, the life of God, being eternal or everlasting in quality and nature.

Church is not the place where Christian salesmen gather to learn the latest marketing scripts. It is the place where martyrs gather to celebrate and renew life in communion. To use the image from the Motel Zero link, it is where we mend our broken cords if need be and get plugged back into the power.

This next point seems important to me, but it may be important only to me. I don’t think the martyr needs to concern himself with who might be watching him. Hebrews chapter 11 talks about the many faithful who had gone before: the patriarchs, the judges, and the prophets. The chapter concludes with these words -- “All these were approved through their faith, but they did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, so that they would not be made perfect without us.” Then the twelfth chapter begins with this:

Therefore since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and run with endurance the race that lies before us …

Sometimes I feel just like that light in Robin’s picture. I am forgotten, stuck to a lost wall and useless. Why should I bother? How is my light going to benefit anyone here?

The martyr’s calling is never to the derived temporal world, but, always, his witness is to the eternal realm of the spirit. It may be reflected in the world, but the reality is always a heavenly one. This journey is of necessity one of separation and isolation to a degree. I think if we could see behind the veil it would be a great and terrible sight. Where we walk in shadows there is a blazing light. Where we stand alone there is a vast host.

When the servant of the man of God got up early and went out, he discovered an army with horses and chariots surrounding the city. So he asked Elisha, “Oh, my master, what are we to do?”

Elisha said, “Don’t be afraid, for those who are with us outnumber those who are with them.”

Then Elisha prayed, “LORD, please open his eyes and let him see.” So the LORD opened the servant’s eyes. He looked and saw the mountain was covered with horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. -- 2 Kings 6:15-17